Traditionally a slot machine was a stand-alone betting device that accepted coins as the wager and likewise paid out winnings in coins by dumping the won amount into a coin tray at the base of the machine. This required that the machine store the coins wagered and also have a sufficient number of coins to pay the winnings. If the machine received more coins than could be stored, it had to be opened up and the coins removed. Also if the won amount exceeded the number of coins in the machine the player had to be paid in person and coins added to the machine. This can be quite labor intensive considering that many casino floors may have as many as 1500 to 2000 machines. This gave raise to thoughts of cashless gaming.
Over the years the types of games that were popular changed. Initially gaming was table games but as time went on machine based games became accepted by more players. As the popularity increased the percentage of the gaming revenue also increased to the point that many casinos installed player-tracking systems to determine the type of player playing the machines and to better serve those players. The player-tracking system needed a way to ID a particular player and cards were chosen, some with punched holes but mainly magnetic strip cards. Now that the machine based gaming represents more than 50% of the casino's revenue, most every casino has a player tracking system.
In recent years with advances in electronics cashless gaming systems have started to be installed some that are account based with the card serving as a means of ID and others using paper coupons. The account-based system uses a magnetic strip card, which is linked to an account stored in a back room computer in much the same way as a debit card is in automatic teller machine (ATM) systems. Winnings and losses are transmitted over a local area network with the accounting being performed by the back room computer. While a coupon, sometimes referred to as “ticket-in ticket-out”, system a printed coupon (the Ticket) is optically read to put the printed value into the machine, so the player can place a wager. When the player desires to end the play session by cashing out, the system prints the winnings or money still in the machine on a paper coupon. This system has the potential to run stand-alone, but the ease of duplicating printed coupons requires a back room computer to monitor the coupons in circulation. The above systems both require an expensive network and back room computer. The coupon system, in addition, must have a coupon reader and coupon printer, requiring paper and ribbons, in each slot machine.
Now there is an effort to make a cashless gaming system truly stand-alone or least with minimal monitoring. Some systems have looked to the financial chip cards (smart cards) as a solution and using available combination readers designed for the banking industry. While they work there are some draw backs, the cards use metallic contacts to communicated with the chip and the combination readers were really not designed for the casino environment. The commercially available combination readers being designed to read bank cards read the full length of the card requiring that it protrude further out the front of the slot machine and requires a panel cutout and mounting not compatible with existing slot machines. But the real issue is the contacts in the reader itself cannot hold up to spilled drinks and cigarette ashes ever present in the casino environment.
The next generation cashless gaming will be able to run stand-alone (no back room computer and network), requires no consumables such as paper and needs little or no maintenance.
The following discloses an embodiment of a device, which provides a major step towards the next generation.